I find it difficult to plant small items with my cotton gloves, so I use those latex food gloves that I keep in my kitchen. They are super thin and it feels like you have nothing covering your hand.
I do tend to forget how thin they are and I continue on planting for hours. When I get done, my hand looks like this:
All that black dirt is under the gloves! Yes, I get little rips and the soil clogs under my nails and then under the entire glove. So much for clean hands...
I thought I'd show you a little trick I use to fill large containers.
Instead of using more soil than I need, I fill the bottom with the plastic containers that I just took the plants out of. Just squish them in. It saves soil, lessens the weight of the container and helps provide drainage.
It's a good thing.
Here is that container all planted.
I put a canna in the back and some of my new dahlias in the middle. It should be stuffed full once they come up.
Do you recognize that stick with the birdhouse in the back?
It's my pupae on the stick that I saved in the garage all winter.
One of them fell off and I picked him up and put him on top of the soil and he moved! He didn't exactly roll over or anything, but he sort of bobbed up and down a bit. They are alive. I hope something does not eat them now that I've put them outside!
It's colder out today than I expected so I just turned on the television to check the local weather. It's only 48 degrees and A FREEZE WARNING IS IN EFFECT FROM 11PM TO 7AM. Just my luck! ARRRGGGGG .... off I go to haul all the plants into the garage.
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Your grouping of flowers look great. Sorry to hear about the weather.
ReplyDeleteI love your trick of overturning the containers. Why did I never think of that? I just use styrofoam from boxes.
ReplyDeleteNow that is a trick to try out next time :-) I know what you mean about the cloth gloves, they impede me from getting on with what I need to do in the yard.
ReplyDeleteMick in Canada
That trick about putting the empty plastic plant containers in the bottom of the pots, I do that too. Sure saves on the amount of potting soil needed!
ReplyDeletePretty planted up containers, Zoey..we will see more of them as they grow, right?
About the gardening gloves..I rarely use them for planting. I need to feel the dirt..but then you can imagine how my hands and nails look!
That's a great tip with using the plastic in the bottom of big pots. I use broken pieces of ceramic pots, but they don't fill in the space like the plastic-good one!
ReplyDeleteI hope the butterflies come out! I was thinking about them when you showed us the butterfly a few days ago.
Thank you, Hadias.
ReplyDeleteChopsticks, styrofoam would be great, too. I used to use the styro peanuts, but they created a HUGE mess when I changed the soil. I still have little peanuts popping up around my yard.
Hi Mick,
I like the cotton gloves for shoveling, etc....just not when I need to feel the soil.
Betty, Since the dirt was inside my gloves, I was feeling it much more than I really wanted to. ha ha. You will be sick of seeing those plants by summer's end! :)
Di, I feel good using those pots so they don't clutter up the lanfills. I hope the butterflies wait to come out until I am home to see them.
That's a good tip, Zoey - if I need to keep a pot lightweight I'll try to remember it.
ReplyDeleteWith our winds, for some of the patio pots with permanent shrubs and trees I went the other direction, putting in chunks of brick and broken terracotta to make the pots heavier so they wouldn't be blown over.
Did anything happen to the chrysalis when the weather changed?
Annie at the Transplantable Rose